Hitch lead: Kenny Grilliot
Member: Chris Jackson-Jordan
Our hitch went very well this past week, the first day I spent some time training Chris at how to go about doing stands and plots within them. He was able to catch on pretty quick giving him plenty of practice at the different jobs even though we already had three days of actually doing plots. Tuesday we had to take chainsaws up to our work area because the road was completely blocked for several miles due to the fallen trees on the road. We did not get the road completely cleared but we were able to get enough cleared that we could walk to the stands in order to get our work done. Thursday we ended up having a delay because of a passing storm that changed out plans on what we wanted to do even though we still got work done in other stands. Some of the tools we use when doing variable and fixed plots include loggers tape, D-tape, a clinometer, reliscope, and a compass. We would have to measure the height and number of trees growing in our fixed plots based on sizes we decided to use to see if it fulfills the necessary quota for certifying the stands. The hardest parts of the hitch is when you get complicated stands such as one we had this week where we had a combination of steep slopes, a lot of down trees to climb over, and thick brushy areas to navigate through. Other than that there isn’t all that much to say about our hitch other than we packed our own lunches and were close enough to stay at Moyer all week.